Last updated at Mon, 09 Jun 2025 20:16:37 GMT

Migrating workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS) represents a significant strategic opportunity, enabling greater agility, scalability, and potential for innovation. But undertaking this transition without a comprehensive strategy for visibility and security can introduce unforeseen risks, operational delays, and challenges in managing the new cloud environment effectively. A critical aspect often overlooked is the discovery and protection of sensitive data as it moves to and resides within the cloud, demanding specific attention.

Addressing security proactively is not merely a technical requirement: it functions as a crucial enabler, allowing organizations to fully realize the strategic benefits of the cloud without being hindered by security roadblocks or compliance failures.

Furthermore, bringing sensitive data protection into focus early connects the technical migration process directly to significant business risks, such as regulatory non-compliance and the potential impact of data breaches, underscoring the importance of robust security solutions for confidently realizing cloud benefits.

Integrating security across the migration lifecycle

A successful and secure migration is not achieved by treating security as an afterthought. Security considerations must be integrated throughout the entire migration lifecycle – from the initial assessment of the current environment, through mobilizing resources and establishing the cloud foundation, to the final migration and modernization phases.

Cloud migration typically involves distinct stages:

  1. Assess: Evaluating the current state, identifying assets, and understanding existing risks.
  2. Mobilize: Preparing resources and establishing a secure cloud foundation or landing zone in AWS.
  3. Migrate and modernize: Transferring workloads and potentially optimizing them for the cloud environment.

Addressing security continuously across these stages helps prevent costly delays and rework often associated with late-stage security implementations. Effective tooling and methodology are essential here.

Rapid7’s security platform is designed to support organizations through this journey, providing the necessary visibility, risk context, and security controls for a smoother transition to AWS. The platform unifies critical capabilities, aiming to provide a 360° view of the attack surface and streamlining security operations across hybrid environments.

Improving migration efficiency through unified security

Efficiency is paramount across migration phases to maintain project velocity without compromising security. Managing multiple disparate tools can impede progress and obscure visibility. Rapid7 helps streamline critical activities by unifying essential capabilities within its Command Platform:

  • Asset Discovery: Identify every vulnerable device and weak identity across your environment with comprehensive attack surface management.
  • Risk-based prioritization: Incorporate business context, third-party vulnerability findings, and threat intelligence into how you assess risk to improve your cloud security posture and protect cloud workloads.
  • Proactive remediation:Customize remediation workflows to seamlessly orchestrate and automatically respond to any vulnerability.

This integrated approach offers advantages beyond simplified tool management, potentially leading to richer context through data correlation and more effective prioritization.

During assessment

Comprehensive planning requires a complete asset inventory. Surface Command accelerates the initial assessment phase through rapid, comprehensive asset discovery across internal and external inventories, including cloud environments like AWS. This helps to eliminate blind spots and identify all assets, including potentially unsecured systems, before they are considered for migration.

Subsequently, Exposure Command builds upon this asset foundation, adding vulnerability data and risk scoring to identify critical weaknesses in on-premises systems slated for migration. It enables teams to focus remediation efforts effectively by prioritizing vulnerabilities based on threat-aware risk context before these systems move to the cloud.

During mobilize and migrate and modernize

In these intensive phases, Exposure Command ensures the AWS landing zone and core services are configured securely according to organizational policies and industry best practices (e.g., CIS Benchmarks) through its Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform  (CNAPP) capabilities, while providing ongoing monitoring for misconfigurations. It also plays a critical role in managing cloud permissions by analyzing identities and access rights to help enforce least-privilege access models.

As workloads are deployed, it offers  vulnerability management tailored for cloud assets, including container security. Concurrently, InsightConnect reduces the manual workload associated with security tasks. As a SOAR solution, it utilizes numerous plugins to automate repetitive processes like configuration validation, vulnerability enrichment, or initiating remediation workflows. This automation frees up valuable security and IT resources, helping maintain project velocity.

Enhancing risk management: Before, during, and after migration

Migrating to the cloud should not involve transferring existing on-premises security risks or inadvertently creating new ones in the AWS environment. Proactive risk management, integrated throughout the migration lifecycle, is essential.

  • Before migration: Surface Command's ability to discover known and unknown assets provides a foundational inventory, helping prevent the migration of forgotten or unsecured systems. Concurrently, Exposure Command's vulnerability management capabilities allow organizations to identify and address critical weaknesses in on-premises systems targeted for migration, leveraging threat-aware risk scoring to prioritize remediation efforts before these systems enter the cloud.
  • During migration (mobilize and migrate phases): As the AWS environment is established and workloads deployed, Exposure Command ensures secure configuration and detects drift. Its capabilities aid in managing cloud permissions and enforcing least privilege. Critically, Exposure Command integrates sensitive data discovery capabilities, leveraging technologies like InsightCloudSec or ingesting findings from services such as Amazon Macie. This provides visibility into the location of sensitive data within AWS. This data-centric context is incorporated into Exposure Command's risk analysis, including attack path analysis, allowing teams to prioritize threats based on the potential business impact of compromised sensitive information.
  • During and after migration (modernization and ongoing operations): In modern cloud environments utilizing CI/CD pipelines, Exposure Command supports a proactive DevSecOps approach. By integrating security checks directly into the development lifecycle—scanning container images and validating Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) templates—organizations can identify and fix security flaws before deployment to AWS. This "shift-left" strategy, facilitated by integrations with CI/CD platforms, significantly reduces the risk of introducing vulnerabilities into the production AWS environment and embeds security into cloud operations.

Building confidence through visibility, control, and automation

Achieving efficiency and robust risk management culminates in greater organizational confidence throughout the migration process and into ongoing cloud operations. Access to accurate, comprehensive data on assets and their associated vulnerabilities and risks allows for more informed, data-driven migration planning.

This comprehensive approach enables organizations to:

  • Move beyond simple lift-and-shift approaches, using security posture data to strategically decide which workloads to migrate, identify necessary pre-migration remediation, and design secure target architectures in AWS.
  • Validate the security posture of the foundational AWS environment with Exposure Command providing assurance before large-scale workload migration commences.
  • Benefit from consolidated visibility and reporting through dashboards and features like Executive Risk View, offering stakeholders clear insights into the security status and risk landscape. This capability translates technical findings into business-relevant risk information to foster broader confidence.
  • Leverage integrated detection and automatic response capabilities post-migration to ensure the security team can manage potential threats effectively in the new AWS environment.

This level of comprehensive visibility and control replaces uncertainty with operational readiness.

Achieving a secure and confident AWS transition

The transition to AWS offers substantial benefits in terms of agility, scalability, and innovation. However, realizing these benefits securely requires navigating the inherent complexities of migration and cloud operations.

Rapid7’s integrated solutions – Surface Command for foundational visibility and Exposure Command for comprehensive risk management across vulnerabilities, cloud  workloads, sensitive data, and CI/CD pipelines)provide the unified capabilities needed to manage the cloud journey efficiently and securely.

By delivering clarity and control across the entire migration lifecycle and into ongoing operations, the platform helps organizations manage the complexity of cloud security, enabling them to migrate to and operate within AWS with confidence.

Gain complete visibility for your AWS migration. Start your Surface Command free trial today.